CHEF TALK, How to Cook Easy, Great Meals on a Camping Trip.

CHEF TALK 

  

  How to cook easy, great meals on a camping trip 

Camping is a great popular outdoor recreational activity for the whole family. The time of the year is approaching to check your camping gear and look for an exciting destination to explore and conquer. Outdoor activities while camping are fun and can be electrifying, the kids will talk about swimming in creeks and lakes, hiking and watching bears for weeks prior to departure.

One of the most exhilarating experiences must be a meal around an open campfire, away from the regular dinner table and the everyday plate’s forks and spoons. Making a campfire is already an elating thought but what do you cook on it, easy yet tasty and filling. Outdoor life makes you hungry. Preparing food for the outdoors is a skill on itself and really something to think about. You need to bring foods with you and that require some planning. Any perishables need a reasonable shelf life to keep you going for a couple of days. Likely you will not be able to pick something up easily. Preparing food in the outdoors is fun when you are well prepared.

Cooking Tools

Tools and Utensils: 

When you go for a weekend trip with a two nights sleep over, a few items plus forks and spoons are sufficient for an exciting open fire dinner experience. Obviously you need some help to light a fire, a cigarette lighter and a few old newspapers will do that trick. Imagine an open fire in front of you and you need to cook on it. Sounds like a challenge? It is. Here are a few useful items to look for:

Hand Made Fire Pit

1.       A rack on legs. This is a tool you will really need, look for a wire meshed one, if possible with foldable legs for easy transport while traveling. Place the rack over the fire and your barbecue is ready. 

2.       Long handle utensils help to keep your hands away from intense heat. 

3.       A cooler box to store and transport your food. 

4.       A pair of scissors. 

5.       Well prepared food.

Vacuumed BBQ Ribs

 Preparing food: 

Packing your food in aluminum foil and vacuuming is a way to go when preparing food for camping trips. Vacuuming will ensure that your food lasts for a few days. The aluminum foil packaging is a great tool for open fire cooking. Just remove the vacuum pouch and place the whole foil packet on your wire mesh rack. By vacuuming your food packs you can rest assure all the food is still where you put it in the first place just in case you had a bit of a bumpy ride to your camping destination.

Tin Foil Food Packets

Raw foods are a good choice for use in tin foil packets but bear in mind that food items like potatoes and carrots take a long time to cook. Pre-cook these items. Season the vegetables with herbs like rosemary and thyme, toss in oil and then pack in tin foil and vacuum. Sweet potatoes cook well on open fire when raw, so do zucchinis, tomatoes and corn. Tin foil packs are great for vegetables and potatoes. Meats work best barbeque style. Skewer your meats on steel barbeque skewers, vacuum pack separately. Ensure to cover the sharp tip with a piece of meat to avoid puncturing the vacuum pouch. Bananas and marshmallows on skewers will be well received by your kids. Do not vacuum those with full pressure or else they will be squashed.

Barbequed Ribs

                                

Burgers, ribs and sausages are ‘super’ barbeque foods. Freeze your burgers before vacuuming, works superb to keep them in shape. Chicken pieces are also well appreciated barbeque items, use drumsticks, wings and thighs. Season with salt pepper, oil and spices or herbs and bring them vacuum packed in the cooler box. You will have plenty of time for all the fun activities, spend time with the kids and truly enjoy a memorable weekend. So be prepared and have fun!


Written by: Professional Chef Marinus Hoogendoorn

www.vacupack.com   www.vacupack.ca

CHEF TALK Canning and Retort in the Culinary World and at Home. PART 2

CHEF TALK

Canning and retort in the culinary world and at home

In part 1 about retort or canning of food products, I explained the importance of temperatures and cooking times during the canning process. Too low temperatures and too little cooking time result in high heat resistant bacteria to survive and worse, to grow at ambient temperatures.

For many chefs this means that canned foods are most likely overcooked and overcooked food means no more healthy food properties. Most chefs tend to use fresh products, which is a good thing but there is a flip side to the coin.

Combing retort foods with fresh food can well be a good choice in home cooking especially when you are pressed with time and on a tight budget. 

I also highlighted that vitamins are often more heat resistant than bacteria. Specialized canning companies use the products when their vitamin levels are at the highest i.e. within 2 days after harvest. 

University studies show that the nutritional values of some canned foods are comparable or sometimes even higher than fresh produce. Vegetables like green beans and spinach lose up to 75% of their vitamin C after 7 days of harvest. Processing the harvest, packing, transportation and putting the product on the shelf of a supermarket takes up most of that time. 

The use of canned foods can therefore be beneficial to a healthy diet. Tomatoes are a good example of a food sometimes better canned than fresh. The heart healthy antioxidant Lycopene found in tomatoes is greater in canned tomatoes due to the heat from the canning process, than the levels of lycopene found in fresh hothouse tomatoes. The levels appeared to be 3 times higher.

Canning or retort can also be beneficial to your budget. Seasonal fresh produce is not year round on the shelves and if available, the extra cost from transportation makes the price high and for many, out of reach. 

Canned products like tomatoes, beans, some vegetables and fruits can be a helpful aide in home cooking. Self canning is therefore a good idea, definitely when you live in a part of the country where fresh produce is hard to come by or extremely pricey during the winter months.

The peak of harvest is the right and best time to get in to action. Seasonal products are then at their lowest price and easily available. If you have the opportunity to buy from local farmers you can get adventurous, buy cheap in bulk and mobilize the whole family. It will sure be a fun activity with everybody involved. 

Main advantage of self canning is that you decide what goes in the pouch.

The use of cans to retort might not be possible for most of us but the use of pouches for retort is very well possible. You need a retort pressure cooker, an investment that you may want to share with family members or other retort enthusiasts.

Retort pouches are specially designed for this purpose. The seal layer of retort pouches will give necessary leaking protection after you vacuum and seal the pouch. This special protection is needed to resist the high heat the pouches will be exposed to. Cooking times vary per product. So ensure to have the right information before you start.

Individual products or combined products like whole meals are suitable for retort. You can enjoy all the summer vegetables and fruits when the snow falls.

When you have your own produce you will get more creative in the kitchen and enjoy your own creations even more. 

Written for PMG by:

Professional Chef

Marinus Hoogendoorn

Culinary expert in recipe development   

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Retort Canning, Basic Information

Retort Canning
Retort canning is a widely used, safe way of commercial canning foods, typically for retail use. Retort pouch bags are used for canning, a process fast becoming an industry standard for commercial food preparations.
Retort pouches have often been used in field rations, space food and camping foods. A retort pouch is made of multiple layers of flexible laminate. If you’ve seen a Capri Sun juice pouch, you’ve seen an example of a retort pouch. You may have also seen tuna companies, such as StarKist or Chicken of the Sea utilizing the retort pouch sealing method. The metal foil laminate is gaining popularity in use as an alternative to traditional canning methods.
The U.S. Army, Reynolds Metals Company and Continental Flexible packaging originally invented the pouch. Historically, the U.S. military has used the pouches for field rations (MREs or Meals, Ready-to-Eat).
The flexible metal-plastic laminate is able to withstand thermal processing used for sterilization, which makes for a safe food storage environment. The pouch is heated under high temperature for several minutes, under high pressure inside retort machines. Food inside the pouches is cooked, in a way similar to pressure-cooking. This sterilization process kills all common microorganisms and prevents food from spoiling.
The retort canning process is similar to canning, with the exception of the container being flexible. The pouches are not regular Mylar bags. Retort canning uses pouches that have been specifically designed to withstand being hot packed.
Many foods lend themselves to the flexibility of the retort canning method, so today’s canners are moving toward this increasingly popular style of canning.
Find retort canning bags here.  http://vacupack.com/bag-flat-commercial/retort-canning

Copywrite PMG 2012

Retort Canning of has NO Scientific data from the FDA or USDA for home canners.  The concerns come from non acid foods such as meats!  We are expressing our experiences, but by no way are these experiences authorized data. Can at your own risk!  
As they say, "Re-Heat before you Eat" on any home canned product in glass, cans or retort for best safety practices.  
All home canning is AT YOUR OWN RISK!